Abstract Title
EagleSat 2: Cosmic Ray Payload
Faculty Mentor Name
Daniel White
Format Preference
Poster
Abstract
Cosmic rays are high-energy atomic nuclei found in space. It is challenging to observe them from Earth, since the Earth’s atmosphere and magnetosphere causes air showering before they reach ground-based detectors. To remedy this, the Cosmic Ray Payload (CRP) is an experiment flying on EagleSat 2 that measures cosmic ray interactions while in low-Earth orbit, over a span of 8 to 12 months. The experiment will measure all types of cosmic rays, including solar, anomalous, and galactic cosmic rays. The primary goal of the experiment is to discover cosmic ray sources, along with providing supplemental data about particle energies to the Memory Degradation Experiment payload. It will focus on heavier particles with energies of 100 MeV to 3 GeV and will characterize both their initial energy and their source vector. This aligns with Objective 1.6 of NASA’s Strategic Plan, which seeks to discover how the universe works. This project was also reviewed and approved by JPL. The payload functionally consists of an array of CMOS imaging sensors to capture particle interactions. The sensors will work in pairs, with two pairs dedicated to determining a particle vector, and two pairs determining particle energy.
- POSTER PRESENTATION
- ARIZONA SPACE GRANT AWARD
EagleSat 2: Cosmic Ray Payload
Cosmic rays are high-energy atomic nuclei found in space. It is challenging to observe them from Earth, since the Earth’s atmosphere and magnetosphere causes air showering before they reach ground-based detectors. To remedy this, the Cosmic Ray Payload (CRP) is an experiment flying on EagleSat 2 that measures cosmic ray interactions while in low-Earth orbit, over a span of 8 to 12 months. The experiment will measure all types of cosmic rays, including solar, anomalous, and galactic cosmic rays. The primary goal of the experiment is to discover cosmic ray sources, along with providing supplemental data about particle energies to the Memory Degradation Experiment payload. It will focus on heavier particles with energies of 100 MeV to 3 GeV and will characterize both their initial energy and their source vector. This aligns with Objective 1.6 of NASA’s Strategic Plan, which seeks to discover how the universe works. This project was also reviewed and approved by JPL. The payload functionally consists of an array of CMOS imaging sensors to capture particle interactions. The sensors will work in pairs, with two pairs dedicated to determining a particle vector, and two pairs determining particle energy.
- POSTER PRESENTATION
- ARIZONA SPACE GRANT AWARD